WASHINGTON — A new American intelligence analysis of a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship concludes that Kim Jong-il, the ailing leader of North Korea, must have authorized the torpedo assault, according to senior American officials who cautioned that the assessment was based on their sense of the political dynamics there rather than hard evidence.

The officials said they were increasingly convinced that Mr. Kim ordered the sinking of the ship, the Cheonan, to help secure the succession of his youngest son.

“We can’t say it is established fact,” said one senior American official who was involved in the highly classified assessment, based on information collected by many of the country’s 16 intelligence agencies. “But there is very little doubt, based on what we know about the current state of the North Korean leadership and the military.”

Nonetheless, both the conclusion and the timing of the assessment could be useful to the United States as it seeks to rally support against North Korea.

On Monday, South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, who has moved cautiously since the assault, is expected to call for the United Nations Security Council to condemn the attack and is likely to terminate the few remaining trade ties between North and South that provide the North with hard currency.

This situation calls for extreme caution! Does anyone really want to see WWIII kick off? Does anyone really think china will not get involved at least on a financial level if we act on this? Does anyone think their will not be a draft if we start a war with N. Korea?

All I am saying is that the consequences of jumping on this an going off the deep end are emense. I don't particularly care for Barry, but caution is warranted. That doesn't mean he should invite Kim Jong Il over to adress congress or anything, but not acting on the assumption that the North did this would be nice.

We might want to raise burden of proof too. I remmember a few years back being scared to death about "weaponsof mass destruction" and so on. Just a thought.

Just because the US and UN can't or won't do anything substantive, doesn't mean S Korea can't.Unless South Korea's President and congress are as totally ineffective a joke as ours, I expect to see some kind of retaliatory action soon. Even if it's a blockade of needed goods. And N Korea needs EVERYTHING.

Ya'know, for being such a poor f**k of a country with starving serfs (can't call 'em citizens), and begging for everything from everybody at every turn, N Korea sure pushes the envelope & pisses everyone off a hell of a lot. What if the rest of the world (China and Russia too) just said NO. No more aid for you!

New World Order or not I'd bet a week's pay the entire northwest pacific is at defcon 2 if not defcon 1. WE went to def2 in 82 and oll the North Koreans did was move a half dozen or so additional divisions within striking distance of the DMZ and shoot SAMs at over flying U-2 and SR-71 aircraft. Most scared I've ever been was when I asked a full bird Colonel, Deputy Cdr for Comm. of 5th Air Force and all U.S. Forces Japan if the balloon was going up that night and got "Honestly, Billy, I don't know." for an answer. I figured if a full bull and a guy with only 5 guys between him and NCA didn't know how was a SSGT gonna know.

What Does It Mean To Be A "Three Percenter"?

These four principles -- moral strength, physical readiness, no first use of force and no targeting of innocents -- are the hallmarks of the Three Percent ideal. Anyone who cannot accept them as a self-imposed discipline in the fight to restore the Founders' Republic should find something else to do and cease calling themselves a "Three Percenter."

No, I'm NOT Charlie. I am ARMED.

Edmund Burke reconsidered in the light of 20th Century funeral pyres.

"Remember: Evil exists because good men don't kill the government officials committing it." -- Kurt Hofmann.

The Nyberg Battle Flag of the Three Percent

This time we are ALL Davidians. This time, we are all Jews, Kulaks, "counter-revolutionists" and "enemies of the state." We are now a despised minority within a country no longer our own.BUT WE WILL NOT BE DESPISED.

My Blog List

Advice on child rearing from my son.

Everyone should grow up with simulated equipment from a heavy weapons platoon. It gives you a more well rounded education and an appreciation for the finer things in life. -- Sergeant Matthew Vanderboegh, United States Army.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.